Tag Archives: french connection

Well my first week has gone well – no new purchases and some right old billy bargains.

The thing is, I’m NOT a fashionable person, I never have been. I’ve never been obsessed with fashion apart from fashion photography (I pour over magazines like Vogue etc. – I never buy them – just in the doctors surgery! ha ha) I find fashion to be an art that I cannot be part of – I have an awkward body (small boobs, bloaty belly, big hips and thighs) and I’m not pretty in the slightest – however – I love looking at well thought out fashion. I’m fascinated by people who rock an individual look and can carry off crazy styles – and as I get older – and less bothered about what people think of me – I’m more confident in wearing what I want to wear. So I’ve started taking risks with my clothes and hopefully as time goes on I’ll get more confident.

The first four were from the Red Cross shop – they sell 2 for 1 – and these books just jumped out at me. I love horror – and I am fascinated about the history of horror – I even taught the history of horror at school to Post-16 – so the books on horror and vampires were perfect for me. The other two were more political/ cultural books – I’m always up for reading books that critiscise the Right in the USA – and I really liked No Logo – so again – they jumped out at me.

The other two I’d looked at a couple of times in the Cancer Research shop – I’m interested in China – so that was an obvious one. The Savage Garden just looked intriguing.

Enough of books – let’s look at clothes 🙂 ha ha:

Birdies from French Connection

I fell in love with the design on this. Not only is it red and black (my favourite combination) but the pattern went all the way round 🙂 So I picked this up for £3.50. Not bad I thought especially as it’s French Connection:

Price

However I’m not going to keep it like this. I really don’t like wearing the standard ‘t-shirt’ style. Usually my band tees etc. get hacked up. However I don’t want to ‘hack’ this one, so I’m going to try and turn it into a halter top somehow. I’ll post photos when I’m done.

Frumpy Cardi from M&S

This cardi may look a tad frumpy, it IS afterall an M&S one 😉 I LOVE this and have been wearing it to death. It’s so toasty, soft and gorgeous. Looks lovely with a short dress and is so cute. I think it cost me £4.50 from British Red Cross.

Greenwich Market bags

I’ve been after some red handbags for a while and I found these last week on Greenwich Market – they were 2 for £5 – and both were used. The one of the right is ridiculously large, with so many pockets for me to fill. So it’s definitely a day wear bag for holding all my daily crap. The one on the left is just so lovely, but a pain to get into when it’s held over your shoulder 🙂

So that was my weeks shopping – can you see a theme? As you can possibly tell, I AM obsessed with black and red. Both colours suit me because I have such pale skin, black hair and dark brown eyes.

Today, I went to Deptford, a vibrant part of South-East London just a short bus ride from my home. I spend a lot of time there as I photograph at The Albany and love the vibe (man). However, I do really love to go there to shop. They have a market with too many uber bargains on it, however under my new rules I have to avoid that market (except for food and flowers). So I go to the two charity shops (Sense and Salvation Army) as well as the second hand clothes shop – whose name has escaped me for now. There’s also the infamous Deptford Junk Market. It really is a ‘get in and dig’ market which puts a lot of people off. There is only so much I can dig around there – but dig I did today:

Polstar the Pest top

I found this on the market. There is a clothing stall there that is literally a jumble sale (but not Jumble Sale prices!) – and I’ve found a couple of really lovely skirts there before. This I HAD to have (of course) – it’s made by George (a clothing line from Asda – the UK’s Walmart) which isn’t too great but it’s second hand so I’m allowed it 🙂

As I walked into Sense, the first charity shop I come across, look what I found on the book stand as soon as I walked in:

MY SEARCH IS OVER!

YES! If you read my last post you’ll know that this was the book I’ve been after and there it was. £1.20 – thank you very much 🙂 I really hope that it’s as good as her other one. Anyway – my search is over, so now I need to set myself a new challenge! ha ha.

BOOTS!

I’m becoming obsessed with boots lately – mainly because I’ve never really been able to afford decent boots, and then I realised that I could get them second-hand! These ones were … wait for it … £4!!!! FOUR POUNDS! They’ve hardly been worn and they’re from Wallis, so they’re at least a decent make.

Side view

They’re pretty high for me – I don’t do stilettos really – however I thought I’d give these a go. The funny thing was that a girl was trying on another pair of boots in the shop and she kept looking over at me. Later on, I saw her in the Salvation Army shop and she came up to me asking if I’d bought the boots and did they fit me! I thought she was going to wrestle me to the ground for them – but she didn’t. Thankfully. I don’t like to get in fights – especially about boots 😉 She then consoled herself with buying jeans made of about 6 different versions of denim – I wasn’t going to take them off her!

So that was Sense – I went on to the Salvation Army shop after that. I’d never been in there before (although I’m a regular at the one in Catford) and it was definitely worth it. Everything is SO godamned cheap it’s really quite worrying:

Jaeger Loveliness

So this was my ‘high risk’ item – a Jaeger jumper. It’s not really the kind of style I wear however, I thought I’d give it a go this winter and see if I can pull it off. If not, I’m sure I can give it back to a charity shop. It cost me ALL of £2.49 – so really not an expensive risk!

I also bought myself a sweater for work – not very exciting but again – £2.49 -cheaper than Primark where I used to buy my work clothes! (although I do wonder if this is indeed a Primark top!)

And finally, my BEST bargain of the day, and it wasn’t for me, and I don’t have a photo of it because I forgot. I managed to buy my (much thinner) friend what looked like an almost unworn Ted Baker skirt for £2.49. Honestly, it was so gorgeous, with beautiful detail on the back and a lovely greeny/grey colour. She loved it when I took it round – I must grab a photo of it when I next go round as it truly is a bargain and a half!